this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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Discord announces plans to expand its successful Video Quests advertising format to mobile devices. This strategic move marks the company's first mobile ad offering, significantly broadening reach for advertisers while maintaining Discord's commitment to user-first, reward-focused advertising experiences. The initial pilot for Video Quests on Mobile will launch in June 2025, offering advertisers a prime opportunity to showcase trailers, make impactful announcements, and highlight premium content to Discord's player community.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

Well soon it'll be time to uninstall the phone app

[–] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago

if this shit shows up on my nitro sub which i paid a year for i'm out

[–] [email protected] 23 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Discord can go suck a fuck!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (3 children)

Oh please tell me, SplashJackson, how exactly does one suck a fuck?!

Edit: Guess you weren't quoting Donnie Darko, my b. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7eMz22h_os

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

With your mouth, silly.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 12 hours ago

Enthusiastically

[–] [email protected] 0 points 12 hours ago

Maybe you should ask your mom

[–] [email protected] 21 points 13 hours ago

And this is why DNS-based ad blockers are needed. Get rekt, Discord, you're not funneling attack vectors into my chats.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

And the Enshitification begins…?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 12 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 14 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I think people are reading the headline only and thinking this will be mandatory ad views on mobile to, like, just use Discord.

This is an existing thing on desktop already that they are porting over to mobile. It's an optional ad you can choose to watch in order to gain in-game rewards for various games. Or sometimes a discord profile frame or something.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

The advertsising will eventually become required and features that actually benefit users that are expensive to maintain will be removed because that is the parh of enshittificstion.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 15 hours ago

You may well be right, and I don't mean to defend Discord or even the feature. I just think a lot of people here were misunderstanding exactly what it was that was being introduced to mobile.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Honestly, I don't mind them adding ads. They've got a business to support. But, calling them "quests" and treating them as "rewards" for their users is just so tone-deaf and disingenuous. Likewise, if I've boosted even a single server, I shouldn't see this crap anywhere, let alone on the server I've boosted.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I don't mind them adding ads.

I'm gonna stop you right there.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago

I hate ads too, but almost no normies are willing to pay for services, so I'm glad they have nitro to reduce ads in my face. It'd be nice if it wasn't that way but that's not my choice that's the choice of the collective to take ads for free stuff.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 17 hours ago

I mean, they do get "rewards". Discord has been doing quests for a while now, even video ones, on desktop. It sounds like maybe this is just the existing feature coming to mobile? For example, I watched an ad for MH Wilds to get in game items.

It's pretty strange, come to think of it. Who exactly is this convincing to buy MH Wilds? I watched it because I already had MH Wilds. So, for me, I watched an ad for a game I already bought for some items. But, why would I do that if I didn't already have the game?

Weird lol.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 17 hours ago

Well, thanks for all the fish.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

What's a good alternative to discord? Matrix seems ok

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago

revolt looks okay but havent used it yet personally

[–] [email protected] 6 points 14 hours ago

That's the one I know. There's also XMPP if you can use something less feature rich.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 17 hours ago (8 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 16 hours ago

Neat buuUUUuuut.

Does Revolt have federation?

As of right now, Revolt does not feature any federation and it is not in our feature roadmap.

[...]

What can I do with Revolt and how do I self-host?

[...]

You can self-host Revolt by:

It's basically a bunch of islands.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

Matrix already exists and has a viable long-term financial plan thanks to the Matrix foundation.

I can't find any relevant funding for Revolt.

Initial filing of the Revolt Platforms Ltd. company.

Unlike the Matrix Foundation, this is a private company with some sort of profit-motive in mind and 100 shares with 75% of them belonging to Pawel Makle.

Matrix Foundation is a non-profit organization. Matrix is already federated. Matrix can already be self-hosted. Matrix already has a Discord-like UI. Matrix already has video calls. Matrix already has screen sharing. Matrix already has a viable financial future.

What's with this viral marketing for this private company ~~based in the UK, a place that similar to the US, doesn't have the best privacy laws?~~ (Scratch that, I thought Matrix was based in Germany, the Matrix Foundation is also in the UK as a Community Interest Company)

[–] [email protected] 16 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

I poked around with Matrix a bit this week but I’m confused as to how it’s being touted as a replacement for Discord. TBC, I’ve been on Mastodon since 2019 and absolutely want these people-powered alternatives to succeed.

I’m not even talking about the onboarding part, I mean the actual function of the app. With Discord you join a community (server, whatever) and there are a bunch of separate channels, usually separated by topics. I joined a few Matrix servers and they all seem to be one single channel; just one big ol’ scrolling chat where everyone is talking about everything.

Unless I’m missing something, I don’t understand how this will work at all for Discord users looking to jump ship.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

I had the same experience, I think the simplest way is to just have servers separated like they are now in Discord, and you can join them and chat in them even if you signed up at a different server.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 15 hours ago

In Matrix they're called Rooms if I recall correctly. Not every instance is very good about breaking it up into smaller groups, but some of them are very good at it.

https://matrixrooms.info/search/

[–] [email protected] 25 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Matrix is better in all these regards yes, but Revolt has one major upperhand. Onboarding simplicity. A big reason the fediverse has struggled to gain major traction.

If you have to read documentation to understand how to sign up to something, then that's immediately enough friction to turn users away. Bluesky worked because it was simple sign-up, Mastodon has switched to this too now, offering a button to send people immediately to a signup page on their default server. For major adoption, you have to get people in the door before you explain federation, not the other way around. Sending people to list of servers and clients they can use is bad user experience for the masses.

Revolt will appeal to Discord users more than Matrix, because you download Revolt and sign up to Revolt, there's no extra thought required.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

Man, people are so willing to jump to companies that literally have plans to monetize the shit out of everything in the future just because it's "simple to use." It's literally the same shit with Bluesky a company that owes a shitload to Blockchain Capital and will be needing to pay that money back somehow. It will have to be monetized at some point. (and whose promises of Federation are clearly hokum)

And we complain about how the Trumpers can't read. Everyone's way way way too ready to jump to some new shitbag company as long as it's "simple to understand."

I'll be real, I think that's as pathetic as not reading.

wE'lL jUsT gO tO A nEw CoMpAnY... after they've monetized the living shit out of us and our data and the network effects make us stay supporting the company for far longer than it deserves. I guess most people don't learn from bad experiences and really are fucking stupid.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 13 hours ago

Blockchain Capital

Did not know they got money from a crypto firm.

I never joined Bluesky because I don't trust any commercial US-based social networks. The American VC culture is hopelessly corrupt.

Investment from some crypto criminals is the cherry on top.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 15 hours ago

That's how it is unfortunately. The best way to get people on Matrix would be by communities hosting on Matrix and advertising that actively in their Discord guilds. Providing simple instructions to pick a client and sign up. Show people they can customise how they like etc, that will help, people love shiny things. Once you have people signed up and using the platform, then they can figure out the federation by being exposed to it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Looks like no video calls or screensharing? If so, unfortunately won't be a viable replacement for me.

Also, looks like there are self hosting options but they seem clumsy? From what I read, and happy to be corrected, a self hosted instance is completely separated from the rest of the Revolt ecosystem, meaning new accounts and everything for each.

I'm also curious how they will upkeep the servers without any kind of monetization.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

Also it's a private company, an Ltd. At least the Matrix Foundation (which already has a viable financial future) is a Community Interest Company (non-profit) and has never had any shares for relevant control. Seems like first thing Revolt did was divvy up shares.

Matrix Foundation founding document as Limited Company, and then updated resolutions describing itself as a Community Interest Company Non-profit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

It's cool, but the problem is the scale, how is Revolt going to fund the server costs if people ever started migrating from Discord? Just purely donations?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Could work if they do a system similar to the fediverse where servers federate with each other. For now there's only the official server but I heard they want to let you host your own server.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

You already can selfhost a server, but it doesn't have any federation at this time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 15 hours ago

Federation isn't in their roadmap. It's going to stay a bunch of islands.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 17 hours ago

Hm, had no idea this existed/should not have been surprised. Thanks for plugging it!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 17 hours ago

FOSS Discord with decent-looking tools? I'm in

[–] [email protected] 6 points 17 hours ago

Saving this for later.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 17 hours ago

Eh, may as well start convincing the boys. There's no way Discord doesn't just get worse from here.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Step 1: Discord CEO thinks about taking Discord public

Step 2: ADS 🤑🤑🤑

[–] [email protected] 7 points 12 hours ago

Does it have an API he can cut off?

[–] [email protected] 36 points 17 hours ago

Wow, who could have predicted this enshittification coming?